Critic’s Choice

By David Fleshler

Franz Welser-Möst

Just 25 years separate Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 from that of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, yet the two works seem to come from vastly different eras.

The Cleveland Orchestra, under music director Franz Welser-Möst, will perform Beethoven’s most serene piano concerto and Berlioz’s feverish portrayal of a lovesick artist’s opium dream Friday and Saturday at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, in the third installment of its four-program Miami season.

Handling the solo part in the concerto will be the great American pianist Garrick Ohlsson, a musician of thunderous technique and deep musical sensitivity, whose last visits to South Florida brought impressive, evocative performances of concertos by Rachmaninoff and Chopin. He has made acclaimed recordings of all the Beethoven piano concertos and sonatas. The Berlioz should be a great showpiece for a virtuoso ensemble like Cleveland, with variations in tone, color and mood that will draw on the orchestra’s immense musical and technical resources.